Away From Home: Youth Experiences of Institutional Placement in Foster Care – Since the creation of the modern child welfare system, child welfare has sent a percentage of youth in foster care to live in institutional placements, not with relatives or foster families. Of the hundreds of thousands of young people in foster care systems each year, over 43,823 (AFCARS, 2020), or 10%, are in group homes or institutional placements, but in some states, that number is much higher, topping over 30% (Children’s Bureau, 2015). Over the years, many reports, investigations, and assessments have shed light on the conditions that foster youth experience in institutional placements. For instance, a 2015 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report found that over 40% of children in institutions do not have a clinical reason for that acute of a setting (Children’s Bureau, 2015). A seminal study reported that residential treatment facilities lack oversight, and protective health and safety practices, and engage in substandard treatment, rights violations, and abuse (Behar et. al., 2007). Another study has shown how youth exposed to institutional care often suffer from “structural neglect” which may include minimum physical resources, unfavorable and unstable staffing patterns, and social-emotionally inadequate caregiver-child interactions” (Van IJzendoorn et al., 2011). Researchers have documented how institutions often fracture family relationships, rely on shift staff with often inadequate training and high turnover rates, expose youths to negative peer experiences (James, 2011), engage in restrictive placement policies, and mismatch placement decisions based on level of care needed (Lardner, 2015). A 2013 study by the National Disability Rights Network found that child welfare routinely placed youth with disabilities in institutions with “extremely restrictive settings” and “in settings that are not remotely designed for their needs” (National Disability Rights Network, 2013) which implicates the Americans with Disabilities Act (Juvenile Law Center, 2015). These and other reports have led to a growing movement calling for the reduction or elimination of institutional placements in foster care.